| Rhizoma et Radix Rhodiolae, or "Hongjingtian" in Chinese, was originally a traditional Tibetan medicine, which derives from many species of Rhodiola genus. With the modern scientific research progresses in the recent forty years, Rhodiola plants has surprisingly became a major force as environment adaptability medicine following Gensieng and Senticosus. "Hongjingtian" has a complicated origin in our state market. There has no definite prescription for its origin nor a quality assessment system in 《Chinese Pharmacopoeia》 (2000 edition) yet. So this Chinese-Tibeten drug "Hongjingtian" is urgently in need of systematical arrangement and quality evaluation.Beginning with literature researches of the classical Tibeten medical material that recorded "Hongjiangtian" first, the author traced its history in clinical application and the transfer between species by corresponding with the modern research simultaneously. The result confirmed that the traditional Tibetan medicine "gaduer" (transliteration) is R. wallichiana (Hk.) S. H. Fu var. cholaensis while R. kirilowii is one of the traditional Tibetan medicine red "congfu" (transliteration). In addition, the author questioned and discussed possible problems existed in the relative instruction of《Chinese Pharmacopoeia》.For the study of the medical material, 22 samples of "Hongjiangtian" commodity drugs were collected from 12 provinces all over the country; 24 original plants of Rhodiola genus were also gathered, most of that were recorded in Tibetan medical literature one thousand years ago. Then the identification of these plants was systematically studied through morphology, histology, micro-characteristics, and physical identification; identification tables of some "Hongjiangtian" crude drugs were also made. Though raw drug identification, with reference to relative literatures and plant samples, the most commercially prevalent "Hongjiangtian" species is identified as R. crenulata, which is one of the red "congfu". Although R. sachalinensis and R. rosea are not belonging to the traditional Tibetan medicine, they are used constantly in the local distribution areas. Meanwhile, the others species of Rhodiola genus are rarely seen in the market now.For the usage safty of "Hongjingtian", the primary quality evaluation of different commercially available species was made through the measurement of main effective component. Salidroside was selected as the reference component according to the literature, HPLC method was employed to measure the contents of it in the samples collected above. The result shown that all the "Hongjiangtian" commodity drugs contain Salidroside, and R. crenulata has the highest content among them followed by sachalinensis and R. fastigiata has the lowest content. Furthermore, the contents of the others roots coming from other Rhodiola species displayed a dominant difference too. R. linearifolia shown a higher content than that of R. crenulata, which is the highest content among all the samples measured. But R. wallichiana (Hk.) S. H. Fu var. cholaensis and R. kirilowii, whichwere recommended as representatives of Rhodiola medicine in 《Chinese Pharmacopoeia》, both had a relative low content of Salidroside comparing with the others. According to the author, one single standard component should not represent the complete qualitative assessment of the Rhodiola species, but only as the batch quality control reference of Rhodiola commodity drugs. Some factors such as growing years, preserving days, medical part of the plant's roots and measuring method, etc which may affect Salidroside measurement results were also discussed.Most medicinal Rhodiola plants come from two sectors that belonging to the same Rhodiola genus. The main commodity drugs come from six Rhodiola species that belonging to a single sector, so their feature, tissue, and chemical constituents are very similar. The author has attempted to identify those species at the molecular level in order to find a more accurate identification method other than the traditional... |
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